Changing times require shifting public affairs strategies. Business must adapt to changing times. Weber Johnson Public Affairs has unique and critical relationships, experience and a record of success to tackle your public affairs challenges with winning strategies in changing times.

Welcome to the New WeberJohnson Public Affairs Pilot

Welcome to the first edition of the Public Affairs Pilot, the first in a series of occasional newsletters to help you navigate political and policy initiatives in St. Paul and Washington, D.C. We’re WeberJohnson Public Affairs Group. And for more information about us, check out our new and improved website at www.weberjohnsonpa.com.

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What’s New At WeberJohnson

WeberJohnson is pleased to announce that we have partnered with two new Consultants, Christopher J. Tiedeman and Edward A. Garvey. Both Chris and Edward bring unique experience and expertise to WeberJohnson clients.

Chris is a licensed attorney with extensive experience in grassroots/tops, political communication and public affairs campaign management. Chris has worked successfully on behalf of corporate and political clients developing and executing public affairs campaigns in Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas and Oregon. He is highly regarded for his national network of relationships that enable him to lead successful public relations and grassroots campaigns on behalf of clients seeking assistance at the federal, state and local level. If your public affairs challenges require the creation, education and mobilization of a coalition of non-vested interests to support your cause, Chris is your man. He’s our campaign guy and he’s among the best in the business.

Through our association with Edward Garvey, Weber Johnson is now offering high-level strategic and government relations consulting to select clients in the areas of energy, the environment and climate change, as well as electric, natural gas and regulated industries. With the growing importance of this rapidly changing public policy space to a broad cross-section of the economy, Weber Johnson Public Affairs Group is now positioned to offer clients expertise beyond that of most of our competitors.

As Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s Director of Energy Security, Edward helped draft the Midwest Governors 2007 climate accord and energy platform while at the same time assisting Governor Pawlenty on his Securing a Clean Energy Future Initiative as Chairman of the National Governor’s Association. Edward works well with both sides of the political aisle on a national level and stands ready to serve Weber Johnson clients on complex issues ranging from power grid/transmission to climate change; from rate case advice to environmental compliance; and from carbon footprint analysis to renewable project management.

To see Edward’s or Chris’s full biography, go to: http://www.weberjohnsonpa.com/principals.html

New – And Interesting – WeberJohnson Clients

In each newsletter, we intend to highlight a couple of our new clients. We do this not to boast of our new and growing business, but rather to promote our clients’ products and services in hopes of triggering your interest in our clients. Maybe a partnership will result. If you have an idea how we might find mutual benefit, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Duratel is focused on providing smarter, stronger, and greener solutions for the utility, lighting, telecommunication, and railroad industries. They produce non-metallic products that offer many advantages over traditional materials such as wood, concrete, aluminum, and steel.

Duratel’s primary product is a pultruded, fiber reinforced composite utility pole. Fiber reinforced technology has made tremendous progress in recent years and we feel that Duratel poles pose a sustainable and cost-effective solution to utilities looking to address both environmental concerns and rising distribution costs.

Through rigorous in-system testing Duratel has been able to show the product is significantly lighter, stronger, more durable, and ultimately more cost-effective than traditional utility distribution pole solutions. This product requires no maintenance, does not leach toxic chemicals into the soil and surrounding area, and can be safely recycled at the end of its lifespan.

Duratel has tapped Weber Johnson Public Affairs to assist with a marketing effort to sell these cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative to tradition dirty utility poles.

Verisae software provides web-enabled energy and asset management solutions created to meet the unique needs of multi-site owners. Verisae builds solutions with these goals at the forefront: to lower costs of operations, to reduce energy consumption, and to mitigate and manage carbon emissions across thousands of sites worldwide.

Verisae Enterprise Emissions Tracking (EET) provides your company real time carbon footprint reporting. We provide your company the ability to take inventory of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and your company’s impact on the environment. Our software model incorporates indirect and direct emissions and focuses on the large, distributed enterprise with many locations.

Verisae’s Carbon Footprint software helps you manage your position in critical areas such as energy consumption and fugitive gas emissions, areas in which you can directly reduce your Carbon Footprint.

Verisae has tapped Weber Johnson’s considerable network on a national basis to help advance Verisae’s business and marketing objectives in both the public and private sector. In a cap and trade world, the Verisae product is vital to any large mult-site consumer of energy.

Other Clients recently retaining Weber Johnson Public Affairs include:

• AT&T
• Minnesota Insurance Federation
• Galvin Electricity Initiative

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MN Legislative Update - Motion or Progress?

By: Christopher J. Tiedeman
WeberJohnson Public Affairs

One of our guiding principles here at Weber Johnson when working for our clients is never to confuse motion for progress. This means whether we are doing direct advocacy with public officials, building coalitions to advocate for a position or managing a general political or public affairs campaign, we always seek to implement strategies and tactics that move us towards our clients end goal. Too many in this business look busy just for the sake of the appearance of motion.

It is through the lens of motion vs. progress that we look at the legislative activity just over a month before the gavel is scheduled to drop on the 2009 session. In the case of the legislature, progress is certainly preferred when good legislation is on the table. When the state looks at bad legislation, we’ll settle for motion over progress, even though we’d often prefer our legislators do nothing at all.

Over four months into the five month session, there has certainly been a lot of motion over at the state capitol. At print time, there have been over 2,100 bills introduced in the Senate and nearly 2,400 bills introduced in the House. But with a now $6.4 billion deficit looming over all other legislative activity, we haven’t seen a lot of progress as only 26 pieces of legislation have been presented to the Governor.

In most respects, the motion disguised as progress has been refreshing because bad laws have been averted.

For Example:

For the second straight biennium, enthusiastic legislators trying hard to “do something” attempted to turn Minnesota’s vehicle emissions over to the state of California (a state, we’ll remind you is having the gravest deficit problems in the country in large part because of their short sighted regulatory overreaches). HF690/SF674 is a seven page bill that incorporates volumes of California regulations into Minnesota Code, and gives an unelected California board represented by zero Minnesotans control over Minnesota vehicle emissions. Currently, our emissions standards are set by the Federal Government where Minnesota at least has elected advocates. The fact that California’s emissions standards have been attributed to the near absence of E-85 pumps in California has been a key stumbling block for this ill conceived legislation. Provisions conflicting with key Minnesota priorities have allowed for the development of a diverse coalition of opposition. After lots of motion on this bill, it appears dead for this session.

Similarly, but perhaps more dangerous, for much of this decade, there has been legislative motion which would stop the development of wireless technology in its tracks here in Minnesota. Each iteration of the cleverly but misleadingly named “Wireless Consumer Bill of Rights” (SF1681/HF1837) would regulate new non-issues that technology and competition have made more and more irrelevant. Technological advancement, near universal coverage and customer service have all increased exponentially specifically because the industry has grown and developed in a hyper-competitive lightly regulated marketplace. Minnesota has seen real job growth and a locally grown, burgeoning smart phones applications industry Star Tribune Article that will be severely hampered should Minnesota become a regulatory island. In a year where “jobs” is the word on virtually every bill, this would truly hurt Minnesota’s “jobs” climate. Thankfully, thoughtful legislators have slowed this motion in favor of progress, and this legislation appears to be dead until the 2010 session begins.

These are just two of too many examples of pieces of bad legislation teetering on the edge of passage for the past 2 years that will still lurk in the legislative shadows over the remainder of the session and into any subsequent special sessions. And each of these legislative initiatives is all but certain provide us with more legislative motion between now and the end of the biennium.

These and other pieces of legislation should concern industry and consumers alike, across sectors. They are cause for preparation starting now to help ensure there are no surprises for the remainder of 2009, and that business and industry are well prepared for an even larger contest during the 2010 regular session. Business and consumers have been fortunate in our state of hockey to have a gubernatorial goaltender. But he needs support, and now is past time for the developments of the coalitions necessary to pass good legislation and help block the bad.

Over the course of the remainder of the 2009 regular session however, it is likely that all progress will be towards the goal of balancing our state’s budget for the next biennium.

In the few days, the House passed its tax bill which would increase Minnesota taxes by $1.5 billion, and the Senate passed a $2.2 tax increase. The provisions range from:

• Increases in income taxes for every single income tax bracket.
• Establishing the 4th highest income tax rate in the country.
• New taxes on digital downloads and alcohol.
• Elimination of such popular tax deductions as the home mortgage deduction, the charitable contribution deduction for non-itemizers and the income subtraction for the elderly or disabled.

Governor Pawlenty has introduced and updated his budget balancing plans which would hold the line on taxes (cutting some with the goal of enhancing Minnesota’s job creation environment) and reprioritize the state’s spending. He has said recently of tax increase plans that “it’s a dead end for them. It’s a public policy cul-de-sac. It doesn’t go anywhere.” He has promised to veto either of the tax bills past in the last few days, saying, “The Democrats need to stop thinking up a tax increase every day and start focusing on how they can contain and reduce spending.”

There appears to be little agreement, even between the majority caucuses as to how to proceed, and the clock is ticking. Recent news reports have openly discussed the potential of a special session to deal with the constitutionally required balanced budget. It appears likely that many, but not all, of the legislative policy battles will be set aside to be debated in future sessions when not in the shadow of the current budget deficit.

We’re certain to see much motion and some progress from both proponents and opponents of current and future legislative proposals during the interim between the 2009 and 2010 regular sessions. We, of course, encourage stakeholders in these issues to be vigilant.

Current motion doesn’t preclude future “progress” (good or bad). We’re here to help.

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The Great Climate Debate Golf vs. Tennis

By Edward A. Garvey
WeberJohnson Public Affairs

It’s a turbulent world; politics, policies and purposes are in a state of flux. Accordingly, in these turbulent times the keys to success are vision and the insights to implement that vision. On energy and climate, WeberJohnson offers you that insight…like clarifying the other great climate debate: golf vs. tennis!

I believe the accumulated emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human burning of fossil fuels is already having or is likely to have an affect on the Earth’s climate. It is therefore important to adopt thoughtful, deliberate and economic measures in concert with all the nations of the world to reduce GHG emissions to prevent potentially very adverse consequences.

But what type of measures and how? This is what I call the “Great Tennis vs. Golf” debate. There are those that seem to believe that addressing GHGs is like tennis…adjust the same tool (or racquet) to hit the emissions. The racquet in this case is “cap and trade.” Unfortunately, while I support adopting cap and trade for GHGs in some situations and for some types of emitters, it is not the right approach every situation or every emitter. Poorly designed and inappropriately applied, a cap and trade program can be inefficient, uneconomic and ineffective.

Hence, it is this appreciation of the cap and trade’s limitations that led me to conclude that addressing GHGs is more like golf than tennis. While both are great sports (which I play poorly), addressing GHGs is more like golf than tennis. Every tennis court in the world is the same…except for the surface: clay, grass or hard…but they have the same dimensions. While in golf each hole is different and each course is different…posing different challenges to the golfer….like the emissions of GHGs.

Although there are relatively few coal plants in the country (about 600 or so), these installed coal plants produce electricity very cheaply and it is very unlikely that the cap will impose GHGs costs so high that newer or cleaner (in the case of natural gas) but more expensive alternatives would be an economic replacement…an alternative to new coal plants, possibly; but not as a replacement of the installed coal plants which produce electricity at under 5cents per kilowatt-hour versus over 10 cents for new. In short, for a cap and trade program to affect the GHGs from these installed coal plants, the imposed costs would have to be very, very high; so high that closing down is cheaper than buying credits from elsewhere. I doubt the political balancing process will impose such a high cost…it hasn’t yet in the other places that are pushing forward on cap and trade programs.

Thus, what is likely to occur is that the cap and trade program will impose higher costs on the generator that will be passed on to consumers, which may affect overall demand but not the emissions from the facility. The result: higher energy costs but minimal reductions in GHGs.

Since the cap and trade is an unsuitable tool for reducing GHGs from installed coal plants, there is a need to think of an alternative. A different club, if you will.

I suggest that the installed coal plants should have their own program and certainly be exempted from any cap and trade program as a result. In my program, when a coal plant turns 50 years old it would be decommissioned, and between now and then the owner/operator of the exempted coal plant will work with their utility regulators to begin collecting money and putting it in escrow on the utility’s books for the sole purpose of replacing the energy from that facility (sort of like a pension fund) when it is decommissioned.

The result of this alternative to cap and trade would be an orderly and economic phase out of the installed coal plants and replacement with inevitably cleaner facilities a significant environmental improvement…even if they are replaced with new coal plants. Ratepayers would be no worse off than if they were included in the cap and trade program and are likely to be much better off because the escrow collection would be equal to or less than the associated carbon costs of a cap. Plus, that money will become down payments for the replacement facilities, reducing their costs and lowering the rate impacts instead of being “redistributed” through government programs. Knowing the end-of-life timing for their electricity generating facilities will prevent very expensive life extending improvements. The result: manageable electricity costs and significant GHGs reductions from the electricity sector…something that probably will not happen under a cap and trade.

In these turbulent times, creative insights and ideas will become the path of success. WeberJohnson has the energy and climate skills, experience and commitment to work with you to find this path.

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Stimulus Watch

Weber Johnson Public Affairs is uniquely suited to assist companies that are capable of performing within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Obama Stimulus Plan. Significant federal funds are currently flowing to states for shovel-ready projects in the areas of energy, education, health care and transportation, among others. To take full advantage of this opportunity, clients need to:

• Identify federal programs where you might perform (high school renovation, for example);
• Identify state agencies and key decision makers charged with dispersing federal funds locally;
• Be aware that most money available to states will be obligated quickly or states run the risk of losing the money altogether.

For help navigating these waters, give us a call or respond to email for more information.

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If you have questions about WeberJohnson Public Affairs or wish to talk with us about your public affairs issues, we’re here to help.

Sincerely,

WeberJohnson Public Affairs
651-454-3002